There goes Jerry Brown, the most interesting man in Sacramento

California Gov. Jerry Brown at the governor's mansion during an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board by phone and in person with the Chronicle's editorial page editor John Diaz.

Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Gov. Jerry Brown did not pause for a second when I asked: If you were 10 years younger, would you be running for president in 2020?

“Yes.”

At 80, Brown surely has run his last race. Oh, what a wild ride it has been, for Jerry Brown and the state political landscape he traversed and defined for more than four decades.

He’s moving to his ranch in Colusa County, but he’s not ready to retire from political activism, not with $15 million remaining in his campaign account. He plans to keep raising money to spend on ballot measures for causes he has championed — he cited criminal justice reform — and for candidates of his choice.

“I don’t think $15 million is enough for a former governor to get the respect which he probably needs,” Brown said in an interview Thursday, adding with a glint in his eye, “I’ve been advised by legal counsel that this is an independent committee, and I can make unlimited expenditures for or against candidates, as long as I don’t conspire with them — and certainly I don’t need to conspire with them because I have my own ideas about who should stay in office and how to do it.”

It was a classic Jerry Brown moment: utterly confident in his judgment, utterly contradictory with his past. No one in American politics has been more nimble in realigning himself with the rhythms of changing times, leaving past not as prologue but as paradox.

The first time I interviewed Brown was in 1996, when he was pitching Proposition 212, a ballot measure that would have capped contributions for statewide offices at just $200. He has since met with our editorial board as a candidate for mayor of Oakland (twice), state attorney general (once) and governor (twice). He won them all.

There is nothing like a Jerry Brown interview, whether individually or with a group. The intensity of his look while a question is asked. The directness, and often the expansiveness, of his responses. His invitations for Socratic sparring on the toughest issues: I can’t count the times he asked, “What would you do?”

He has invoked Latin phrases, quoted philosophers and cited our editorials to deter us from a contradiction of position. He was the antithesis of the glad-handing politician; I’ve seen him retreat into the background of social settings where he was the most famous person in the room.

As we sat in the breakfast nook of the governor’s mansion Thursday, his dogs Cali and Colusa frolicking and barking at times, he noted that it was the same room that his father, Gov. Pat Brown, was courted by Sen. John F. Kennedy as a presidential candidate in 1959.

Brown spoke of the need for leaders to look beyond the day-to-day fray to anticipate the truly consequential problems, such as two he will focus on in his quasi-retirement: the threats of climate change and nuclear war.

“I think back on something that Henry Kissinger told me, sitting on a beach in Malibu in the ’70s,” Brown recalled. “Kissinger said, ‘You have the most flexibility to act when you have the least amount of information. When it’s very clear, your options are highly limited.’

“So a certain amount of intuition and scouting out the future would be my piece of advice to anyone who wants to listen.”

Brown may be leaving office, but he’s not abandoning the public debate or his involvement in others’ campaigns.

“I enjoy campaigning. ... I enjoy the whole nine yards,” he said. “And so I have my little fund, and I will use it when I’m not working on the ranch.”

Before joining the opinion pages, he directed the newspaper’s East Bay news coverage. He started at The Chronicle in 1990 as an assistant city editor.

John began his journalism career as a reporter for the Red Bluff Daily News. Two years later, he was promoted to the Washington, D.C., bureau of the newspaper’s parent company, Donrey Media Group. After that, he worked as a general assignment reporter for the Associated Press in Philadelphia and as a statehouse reporter and assistant city editor for the Denver Post.

He graduated from Humboldt State University in 1977 with a degree in journalism. He received a Distinguished Alumni Award from HSU in 2009 and was the university’s commencement speaker in 2010.